Category: in the kitchen

Over the past few months, I’ve been working onincorporating more vegetables into our diet. As we’re trying new vegetables and cooking vegetables in different ways, I’m finding that I simply love vegetables!

Two of my favorites are cabbage and squash. I ate cabbage growing up, only in a stir fry though! The thought of cabbage any other way wasn’t exactly appealing. As far as squash goes, I just started eating it a little over a year ago. It’s delicious!

Steamed Cabbage and Squash is so simple to make!

Ingredients:

Squash (1 medium/large, sliced)

Cabbage (about 2 cups worth diced up)

Butter (about 2 tablespoons)

Salt/Pepper

Directions:

1. Melt butter in large skillet.

2. Add in squash and cabbage, stir to mix with the butter. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.

3. Cover and let steam for a few minutes or until the vegetables reach the tenderness you desire.

4. Serve and enjoy!

This makes a great side dish. I frequently fix this for an easy and yummy lunch. Paxton enjoys the steamed squash and I just love it!

During the month of May, I’m sharing a glimpse into our food budget and menu planning. Each week, I’ll share the groceries we purchased and a detailed meal plan.

Our grocery budget is currently $175 for our family of 3 and I am considering bumping it up soon to $200 since we are working towards healthier eating, incorporating more organics, better quality milk and fresh from the farm meat. We value our health and we’re no longer trying to eat for as little as possible. We are trying to frugally eat healthy!

Homemade baby food is healthy for your baby, easy to make and saves money! About a month before Paxton was started on solids, I started cooking, pureeing and freezing apples, pears, carrots and green beans to stock up.

I simply boiled the carrots and green beans then strained and pureed. With the apples and pears, I made apple sauce and pear sauce and pureed.

Once the food is pureed, I spooned it in ice cube trays and popped into the freezer and froze until solid.

When the baby food is frozen, I popped it out and put it in a freezer bag.

I pulled out cubes of food to defrost in the fridge the night before. {My small Pyrex containers are perfect for storing baby food!}

I wake up to defrosted homemade baby food ready for Paxton to eat! {It’s hard to believe but we’re past the pureed baby food stage and moving on to table foods! We have half a freezer bag of apple sauce left from my second round of making applesauce this fall. The rest of the foods are long gone!}

When he first started on solids, he’d eat 1-2 cubes, as he got older he ate 3-4. Now he can wipe out 4-6 cubes of apple sauce!

Having the applesauce, pear sauce, green beans and carrots in the freezer saved so much time! I only had to defrost these foods and they were the staples of his diet. I made other foods like sweet potatoes and peas that I fed him fresh.

Making your own baby food is so simple and with a little planning it can be easy and convenient – without paying the price for convenience!